B-Greek: The Biblical Greek Forum

Tell us about interesting projects involving biblical Greek. Collaborative projects involving biblical Greek may use this forum for their communication - please contact jonathan.robie@ibiblio.org if you want to use this forum for your project.

I've been in communication with a handful of grammarians/linguists over the past year or two about the possibility of developing a sort of Working Papers project for students and perhaps also professors to have an opportunity to get broader feedback and comment on papers related to Greek grammar.

Working Papers are an extremely common in the field of linguistics. They're generally viewed as somewhere between simply a school paper and a full fledged journal article. One of the challenges for biblical studies students in writing papers on grammatical topics is a lack of access to expertise on the subject. Most Greek professors, while they do a fine job teaching exegesis and the basics of grammar and syntax simply do not have the background in the broader fields of grammar to give adequate enough support for papers on grammatical subjects.

Goals:1) Provide students and scholars with a broader group of grammarians and linguists to receive feedback on their work.2) Contribute toward introducing those interested in grammatical study to the key texts and resources available as well as the specialized literature relating to the topic of their papers through peer-review.3) Create a new outlet for the promotion of the study of the Greek language at an academic level.

Challenges:1) Would there be enough students and professors interested in contributing to such a work?2) Are there enough even places where papers on grammatical subjects are written for students to have enough contributions?3) Would there be enough qualified people who would be willing to give feedback on such papers?

This project would be entirely online--perhaps with an additional electronic resource via one or more bible software companies. We have a location on the internet already chosen, but we're not prepared yet for moving forward. Minimally, we'd want to get in contact with professors who teach Greek and assign (or simply allow) for papers on grammatical subjects in their classes in order to gauge interest. Briercrest, Biola, Houston Baptist University, DTS, GIAL, TWU are all possibilities schools that have come to my mind, but if anyone could suggest others that fit the bill, I'm all ears. These three are all places where I know there's either a grammarian/linguist teaching or they provide a class that focuses specifically on "advanced grammar."

cwconrad wrote:Incredibly? You didn't expect any response at all? I personally think that hosting such "working papers" as you describe would

(a) perform a function of immense value not only to serious students of Biblical Greek but to serious Classicists concerned with the whole development of the Greek language, and at the same time

(b) provide vital assurance that the B-Greek Forum can serve the interest of advanced Hellenists as well as those of beginners in Biblical Greek.

One of the people I've been discussing this with is Micheal Palmer and currently, we had imagined using his website http://www.greek-language.com to host it--the visibility of his website on the interest has a lot of potential. But I'm sure it would be possible to leverage both the new B-Greek forums and his website together in a useful manner, because you're right, there is plenty of potential for remaking B-Greek as an extremely useful tool for the advanced Hellenist once again with this project.

Right now I'm working on a list of people to contact who might be interested in helping contribute papers either themselves or through their students and classes and also people who would be willing to review papers.

For projects in this forum, I don't think it matters so much where the results are published, as long as they are published on the Internet somewhere, for free, with appropriate intellectual property rights (e.g. a Creative Commons license).

I suspect we'd be happy to have any forum that meets those criteria use our forums to coordinate and communicate.

And if a project is looking for a place to publish their results, or advice on licensing the results, we can definitely help them out.

Jonathan Robie wrote:For projects in this forum, I don't think it matters so much where the results are published, as long as they are published on the Internet somewhere, for free, with appropriate intellectual property rights (e.g. a Creative Commons license).

Most of the time, Working Papers projects seek toward publishing in progress research with an aim to published their work in full-fledge peer review journals. I don't know if that would be an issue here...

mwpalmer wrote:I think it would be a good idea to also contact departments of linguistics where students have previously done theses or dissertations on Hellenistic/Biblical/Koine Greek.

That's not a bad idea.

-Ohio State University (Brian Joseph is on faculty)-Northwestern University (Mari Olsen wrote her aspect dissertation there).-The University of Texas at Arlington (there's a lot that's come out of here because of the school's relationship with SIL).-University of Pennsylvania (or wherever Ann Taylor is currently teaching--assuming she is teaching).-University of Minnesota (Dr. Friberg did his dissertation there, but I don't know if there would be any faculty interested).-University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign?? (Hans Henrich Hock is professor emeritus there and though he is more broadly interested in PIE, there are likely grad students who would be interested).

That's a great list. Even if those schools don't currently have anyone working on Hellenistic Greek, making them aware of the project may lead to submissions in the coming two or three years as new grad students reach the writing stage in their programs.

I would be glad to work jointly with the b-greek forum on the issue of hosting. The server on which the working papers reside physically is of little consequence as long as it's secure. We can use mirroring or cross-linking to make the papers available from both locations.